World Young Horse Championships Held Next Week After Dramatic Increase in Graduates at World Championships
2 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on World Young Horse Championships Held Next Week After Dramatic Increase in Graduates at World Championships
When Charlotte “Lottie” Fry and Glamourdale became world champions and Dinja van Liere on Hermes earned bronze at the world championships last month it marked a dramatic shift in the performance of young horses at top sport. Of the 93 horses on the start list, 22 had competed in world young horse championships. At Tryon World Equestrian Games four years earlier, three horses came out of the young horse championships, and at Normandy in 2014 the number was zero.
This year’s young horse event officially named World Breeding Championships will be staged in Ermelo, Netherlands Sept. 8-11.
The first young horse championships were held in 1999, initially with five and six-year-old horses, seven-year-olds were added in 2016. A non-championship class for four-year-olds is on the program this year.
And unlike early years when competitors were mostly on German, Dutch and Scandinavian-bred horses, riders now compete on many breeds–among them, 11 PRE and CDE horses from Spain and three Lusitanos from Portugal, and horses bred in countries as far away as Australia and New Zealand.
Both Jeanna Hogberg of Sweden on Hesselhoej Down Town, the 2021 five-year-old champion, and Charlotte Fry of Britain on Kjento, the six-year-old champion last year, are returning for this year’s championships, a year older.
Dinja van Liere is bringing Mauro Turfhorst, a KWPN stallion, to compete in the five-year-old division.
(Ilse Schwarz, a dressage trainer based in Wellington, Florida who has covered several world young horse and senior championships, will be in Ermelo to provide regular reports.)
